Friday, August 18, 2006

ARRINGTON VS. CARR, ROUND TWO!... LINKING TO A-LISTERS' POSTS? THAT'S SO 2003
It's been amusing the past couple days seeing all the action around Nick Carr's post, "The Great Unread"

Robert Scoble, Shel Israel, and Michael Arrington are but a few of those who rip into Carr. For me, I didn't understand what he was complaining about. That he, Nick Carr, has to kiss ass to A-list bloggers (I'm assuming his traffic doesn't put him in the A-list)? That he, Nick Carr, only ranked 615 on Technorati? That he, Nick Carr, wants more attention since he doesn't have too many friends? :) (okay, that was mean)

For me, I blog as an outlet to my random thoughts and as a service to those who visit my blog.  I read a fair amount each day, so I try to at least share the links and articles I come across. Whether it was just a couple hundred to a few thousand readers, who cares? I don't since I'm not trying to get rich through this or sell books or fill a gaping hole of loneliness. Due to work and our recent move to Palo Alto, I barely blogged for two months and now I'm slowly getting back into it. Also over several months my Technorati ranking dropped considerably from about 2,500 to 11,898. My traffic dropped too, so I probably moved from a B-lister to a C-lister. Do I care? No. I know I lost readership, but I'm more focused on simply sharing information with others and amusing myself through writing. Eventually, as long as I write some interesting posts, I know new people will visit and stay on as readers and some old ones will come back.

One specific point I disagree with Nick on is his comment that "the best way, by far, to get a link from an A List blogger is to provide a link to the A List blogger."  That's SO 2003. Since Nick is an author of a decently known book, he might have by-passed some of the long steps towards building your blog's audience. From my experience, the best way I received links from A-list bloggers, which created more visibility, is when I wrote an interesting post and emailed them asking to link to it.  I never wrote to specifically kiss ass to a certain blogger, so that he could link to me. This sounds stupid to me.  I would just focus on writing good posts, so more people would appreciate my writing and decide to link to my blog without prompting.  The beauty of the Blogosphere is that it is egalitarian.

No comments: